Only 14 relatives of anti-Sikh riots’ victims got job in 40 yrs: NCM chief

Forty years after 2,733 Sikhs were killed in the riots here following then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s October 31, 1984, assassination, kin of victims continue to await justice and rehabilitation.

At the first ever open house the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) arranged for the families of victims at its national headquarters here today, it transpired that only 14 relatives of those killed have got jobs in 40 years.

“None of the 944 families resettled in West Delhi’s Tilak Vihar after the riots have got ownership rights so far. If that was less, outstanding power dues of Rs 13 crore are pending against these 944 families in Tilak Vihar. Most of the surviving women in affected families were given jobs as sweepers, which was a betrayal of trust,” Commission chairperson Iqbal Singh Lalpura told The Tribune after listening to the members of at least 50 affected families that participated in the event.

Lalpura said he asked state governments for a status report on the rehabilitation of affected families in October last year. “We are still awaiting the response. In Haryana, no one got any job,” Lalpura added, promising to take up the matter on priority.

Family after family that attended the confidence-building meeting that the NCM had organised said they were yet to receive closure. All of them also demanded that the New Delhi resettlement colony called “Vidhwa Colony” be renamed as Shaheed Colony.

The families told the NCM chief that their Tilak Vihar’s Block C houses were not in a habitable condition. Satnam Kaur, 50, recounted the horrific murder of her father who was slaughtered

by a mob in Trilokpuri on October 31, 1984.

“I was only six-year-old when my house in Trilokpuri was gutted. My father was killed in front of my eyes. Our neighbours gave away our whereabouts. I have two children, one in college and the other in Class XII. After I lost everything in the riots, I worked as a domestic help to raise my children. Now, I want a future of dignity for them,” she said.

Kulwant Singh who works as an auto-rickshaw driver was only five-year-old when his brother and father were killed by rioters. “No compensation has been given to us and we do not have the papers for the houses where we were rehabilitated. My father was a coolie. The mob killed him and my brother in front of my eye,” he said.